“I don’t even know if I really like you or if the medication is making me like you,” Jenn said to Nuri through her tears. With the shifting of doses, the depression, the therapy, revisiting the trauma, the ground beneath her seemed to flip from under her. Circling around and around, it was as if she was drowning and unable to grasp at anything concrete.
Where did the trauma end and reality begin?
I need to take care of myself.
I am not accepted.
I am alone.
These thoughts fill her lungs like water.
Photography: Ariel Shim
Before Jenn came to Ekko, she couldn’t quite describe the heaviness she often embodied and the dark recesses she frequented. But as she got connected to the body, Pastor Bryan was the first to help name it. “Jenn, you’ve been through a lot,” he said to her, “All these years, you’ve been piggybacking this trauma and it has developed into chronic depression.” He encouraged her to seek help. It was the first time she realized she could ask for it.
“Pastor Bryan helped me realize that it’s not just about reading the Bible enough or praying enough,” she continues.
“Depression isn’t always just a spiritual issue. There are mental and physical components to it. Sometimes you need help, and that’s okay.”
Jenn carries the deep and resounding wounds of abuse, of divorce, of a parent’s death and of financial instability. It’s here in the layers upon layers of trauma that depression took root and built up a distrust and resentment toward God. Ever since she was a child, she felt alone. “I felt like I had to earn love and acceptance. No one was going to be there to help me,” she says. As a child, Jenn was crippled with anxiety and the fear of abandonment.
With help from therapists, she began to learn how to process the wounds from her childhood and how to grieve properly. “Before Ekko, I never realized the trauma that was so clearly in front of me. To revisit it is painful but weirdly refreshing. I have this space to explore and feel safe.”
As she tells her story on the couch in their apartment, Jenn and Nuri sit closely, side by side. The lamp behind them blankets their shoulders with a warm hue. Jenn looks at him as she explains her reluctance to try medication. “What if there was no other solution?” she worried. “What if nothing can help me?” In the first few years in her journey toward healing, therapy—supplemented with medication—began to lift the weight in her chest, but it took many months and trial doses to settle on the right prescription. Each shift in medication set off a chain reaction of doubt and confusion.
And after two years of dating, Jenn and Nuri eventually broke up.
It would turn out to be the turning point in both of their lives.Â
When they first started dating, Jenn coped with all of the trauma and mental illness by avoiding her anger and emotions and focusing on their relationship. But stripped of her emotional crutch and coping mechanisms, Jenn was forced to come face to face with the God she felt so abandoned by. Up until that season in her life, she felt like she had to be put together—even as she was unraveling. But as she found herself alone, without Nuri to lean on, she was able to come to God angry, weak and naked. Messy and defenseless.
“I realized didn’t have to go to God as the strong girl I thought I had to be. I gave Him my raw emotions. And when I did that, I learned that I could really lean on Him with all my weight.”
“The break up was exactly what I needed to heal. God wanted to bring me home. To teach me that He is good and that He is faithful,” Jenn says.Â
As Jenn was learning that she could trust in God as a Father, Nuri was learning that it wasn’t his job to save her. “I wanted to be her savior or say the right thing, but I learned that’s not what she needed, nor my responsibility,” he continues, “I needed to learn. I Googled a lot.” Jenn giggles as she remembers how she caught him searching, “How to Listen Better.” He lets out a laugh and adds, “I thought nodding was listening.”
Eventually, Jenn and Nuri got back together and eventually got married—though as very different people, their stories profoundly edited and rewritten by God. In June, they celebrate their two-year wedding anniversary. And though she still walks with a limp, Jenn continues to learn more about herself in regards to her story, her marriage and her career. “I’m still learning what it’s like to really be a child, where I can rest my head in His chest. To really trust God as a Father. Trust in His timing and that He’s got everything in His hand.”
“I am learning how to love myself in the present. Not someone I will be, or plan to be in the future, but letting God meet me here.”
Though depression is something that Jenn continues to grapple with and fight through, she says, “I can stand and testify that God saved me and is still saving me.”
We wrote about Mental Health Awareness and faith last month in our post, Lights and Shadows: “As the church, we offer hope and the healing power of God’s grace through wholeness in community. We are a place of refuge and guidance for those who are suffering.”
If you are struggling, here are some resources to help guide you. Please open up to someone you trust, or to one of our leaders or pastors. Reach out. There is hope.Â